Reading Comprehension: Seven Chairs
Home › 5th Grade › Reading & Writing
Skill: Reading an original story to analyze characters, vocabulary and theme
Download PDF worksheetAnswer key (PDF)
Free for personal and classroom use. Print at 100% / "Actual size" on US Letter paper.
About this worksheet
This fifth-grade reading comprehension worksheet features "Seven Chairs," an original short story about a school chess club that needs six players for a tournament but has only four members. Two club members, confident Priya and newcomer Jonah, react to the problem in very different ways, and Jonah's idea of teaching one chess piece at a time in the cafeteria changes the club. The story is about 240 words long and is followed by four multiple-choice questions and a written response about theme.
The questions are designed for upper-elementary thinking. Students identify the central problem, compare how two characters respond, use context to figure out the meaning of the word skeptical, put events in order, and explain a theme with evidence. The ending is intentionally realistic: the team does not win the trophy, which invites a richer conversation about what success means.
How to use it: ask students to read the story once straight through, then reread with a pencil. For each multiple-choice question, have them underline the sentence that supports their answer. For the vocabulary question, encourage them to read the sentence with each answer choice in place of skeptical and see which one fits.
The answer key gives each correct answer, a supporting quotation, and a sample theme response. This worksheet supports Common Core standards RL.5.1 (quote accurately from a text), RL.5.2 (determine a theme), RL.5.3 (compare and contrast characters), and RL.5.4 (determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text).
Letter Tracing A-M: Uppercase and Lowercase
Sight Words: Trace and Fill In
Adding Decimals to the Hundredths